Hack the Government. No, it's not a vast illegal conspiracy but another hackathon where all comers with an interest in hacking open government data to build new applications and push the government's digital agenda team up around New Zealand.

The national event takes place in eight centres from Friday July 3 to Sunday July 5, along with a Junior Hackathon in Auckland on July 4.

It's not a government-sanctioned event but several agencies are supplying data, resource, meeting rooms and people to help set it up.

The event requires small teams of competitors to produce any kind of hack using government data in around 46 hours. The format of a hack is unspecified but the most common are web applications, mobile applications or visualisations.

All source code is deposited in an open source repository and open-licensed; each team is judged on a three-minute video they must produce, demonstrating what they have developed and its potential.

The is the first GovHack in New Zealand - it was successfully done in Australia last year.

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